Professional tools
FILM FESTIVALS | 24/7 global coverage
Welcome !
Enjoy the best of both worlds: Film & Festival News, exploring the best of the film festival community.
Launched in nineteen ninety five, tirelessly connecting films to festivals, documenting and promoting festivals around the world.
Working on an update soon.
For collaboration, editorial contributions or advertising, send us a email here.
Writing about films and festivals.
Film critic, United Kingdom, guest member of the UK Critics' Circle
FIPRESCI and the European Film Academy.
Guest Professor, Prague Film School.
Winner of the British weekly New Statesman's “Student Journalist of the Year” competition, as a classics scholar, Phillip Bergson later founded the Oxford Film Festival and, upon graduating, was selected by “The Sunday Times” as a “New Critic” and Esa Same week it began to be broadcast on film for many BBC radio programmes. Contributor to “Times Literary Supplement”, “TES”, The Spectator, film critic for “The Sunday Standard”, “Screen International”, Variety, “Film Bulletin”, “Film a Doba”, among others, and FilmFestJOURNAL. in Berlin and Screen Dailies in Cannes, he also worked for the “European Script Fund”, has written scripts for short and feature films (which have been produced and released) and, fluent in eight and a half languages, currently programs and advises several international film festivals and is a casting consultant on several international feature films. At the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, in his native Yorkshire, he created the “Eurovisions” project, to promote classic and contemporary European cinema, which was inaugurated at the Lumiere Cinema in London by His Excellency the President from Iceland.
Presenter and programmer, London Turkish Film Week, December 2018
Co=programmer, 2nd London Turkish Film Week, April 2019
Artistic director of the 3rd London Turkish Film Week, scheduled for June 1-7, 2020.
As a member of the FIPRESCI jury
and member of International Juries in
Thessaloniki, Europa Cinema (Rimini), Munich Documentary, Manaki Brothers, Cine Jove (Valencia), Chicago, TIFF-ODA, SOFIA…
AMERICAN STAR A coastal thing
AMERICAN STAR is a captivating contemporary thriller, well directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego, colorful, intriguing and enhanced by some unexpected star turns. Ian McShane (another 81 year old!) stands out as a grizzled, hardened professional… well, let's just say He hasn't come to Fuerteventura on vacation, nor for real estate business. Little by little, in the dialogues and in the action, enigmatic clues appear, and little by little the connections between the characters are revealed. The environments and locations are good and attractive. Of course, he's a world-weary hitman, and his objective is only belatedly revealed, both to him and to the audience. The camera relentlessly follows him in and out of posh hotel rooms and seedier local dives, where he befriends a free-spirited foreign bar girl. He in turn befriends a young man he meets in the hallway of his hotel, unhappy that his parents are rowing in his room. There's a loud Englishman, who seems to be some sort of distant relative (and possibly an unwanted colleague) who keeps showing up, more or less annoyingly. The waitress introduces him to the character of Mr. McShane. motherplayed by another screen legend, the excellent Fanny Ardant, in a single lunchtime date, while the surprising outcome He briefly brings in a German film star, Thomas Kretschmann, for a most awkward cameo. The historic shipwreck, which gives the film its misleading title, is the wartime luxury liner. american star, which looms over the nearby coast like a casualty of war and lends the proceedings an air of averted or impending doom. Although it is clearly a Spanish production, the film has good English dialogue and acting from this diverse cast. It is well managed. Appearances are constantly deceiving, keeping our attention gripped until the overwhelming finale. A cataclysm in the Canary Islands, with a nostalgic soundtrack of musical hits from the 60s.
AMERICAN STAR Directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego United Kingdom 2024 107 minutes international premiere now in theaters
